Intel Core i5-6600K vs Intel Core i7-8550U

Core i5-6600K vs Core i7-8550U comparison

In our benchmarks, the Core i5-6600K beats the Core i7-8550U in overall performance. Furthermore, our gaming benchmark shows that it also outperforms the Core i7-8550U in all gaming tests too.

When comparing these CPUs we notice that they have the same number of cores but the Core i7-8550U has more threads. With our hardware info, we find that the Core i5-6600K has a significantly higher clock speed than the Core i7-8550U. Despite this, the Core i7-8550U has a slightly higher turbo speed. The Core i7-8550U outputs less heat than Core i5-6600K thanks to a significantly lower TDP. This measures the amount of heat they output and can be used to estimate power consumption. In terms of cache, both these CPUs have the same amount of L2 cache. The Core i7-8550U also has slightly more L3 cache.

Most CPUs have more threads than cores. This technology, colloquially called hyperthreading, improves performance by splitting a core into multiple virtual ones. This provides more efficient utilisation of a core. For instance, the Core i5-6600K has the same number of threads as cores. This means the the CPU does not support hyperthreading.